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THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



this value is hazardous and precarious, owing to the 

 capricious irrigation or sedimentary manuring of the 

 stream that may serve as your Nile ; so that if one year 

 you get a fair pasture, in another it is too watery to he 

 grazed. If for one or more years (according to locality) 

 your hay-harvest is successful, the next season utterly 

 spoils your crop, leaving also a gritty aftermath that 

 stock cannot relish. The farmers in the Trent valley, 

 by the Ouse, Nene, Thames, or Severn, in the rainiest 

 as well as the drier counties, are pretty well agreed in 

 declaring that while the small winter floods compensate 

 for any damage they may do by the cheap manure they 

 leave behind, the great floods of wet seasons inflict very 

 heavy injury by hanging upon the land. And, in their 

 view, no doubt it would be a famous thing if by some 

 tolerably cheap improvement the channels could be made 

 of just that happy dimension and capacity which would 

 overflow every winter with shallow and not long-con- 

 tinued flooding*, yet convey sjieedily off the waters of 

 any heavier or sudden summer downfall. Such good- 

 natured and elastic river courses as these may not be 

 attainable ; but in many cases the fitful streams might 

 be made to water the contiguous meadows properly, in- 

 stead of stagnating to a great depth upon the surface, 

 and so produce a finer quality and richer abundance of 

 either herbage or hay. Occasionally may be found a 

 reach of meadow liable only to slight floodings, and 

 having a gravelly porous subsoil ; and the luxuriance of 

 the grass in such a situation indicates what might be 

 obtained on many other drowned lands with a well- 

 managed overflow and proper drainage. But why are 

 our large water-courses so generally bordered with 

 meadow and pasture? Not because the soil itself is 

 specially adapted for grass-bearing ; not because of fine 

 fattening property in the herbage, or its peculiar healthi- 

 ness for sheep or cattle ; not because rich cheeses or a 

 great amount of other dairy produce can be made there. 

 No ; these low moist grounds are mown and grazed 

 simply because of their over-wetness for tillage and 

 their insecurity from the ravages of inundation. Under 

 present circumstances, in fact, this is the cheapest way 

 of making use of them. But, with the exception of some 

 tracts which with good drainage would make excellent 

 grazing land, and others which might be converted into 

 real and profitable catch-meadow, a large proportion of 

 the grass is naturally poor, and the land would be far 

 more valuable if dried and turned under the plough. 

 There are numerous examples of such lands lying barely 

 three feet above the water level, which when pierced 

 and tapped with underdraiiis, and cultivated and cropped, 

 have yielded in one year more vegetable food than dur- 

 ing many past years of haying and grazing. The Bed- 

 ford Level farmers once maintained that they should be 

 ruined without their wonted winter floods, because their 

 weak lands, under natural sward or laid down for years 

 with ^'rass-s^eds, ne. ded continual moisture ; but at the 

 present day they ridicule the idea of merely making the 

 best of a bad situation: instead of that, they have 

 altered the situation ; and hiving dismissed the floods, 

 they soon opened up a more profitable order of culture ; 

 uud v.hcn y-p'T look at their immense wheat harvests and 

 their magnificent crops of sheep. fed succulent coleseed, 



you acknowledge at once how superior is the present 

 productive arable to the once-famous pasture and 

 hay. I consider that somewhat similar results would 

 follow the etfectual drainage of our river valleys ; and 

 thus, while the defective streams are injuring some 

 grounds that might become good water-meadow, in the 

 far greater number of instances they prevent fertile lands 

 from being managed either as good arable or pasture. 

 Then there is a very large extent of land not subj.'ct to 

 actual inundation, but which lying immediately adjacent 

 to the drowned flats, and delivering its drain-water upon 

 them, is incapable of efficient subsoil drainage (with all 

 the good farming dependent upon it), because the floods 

 dam back the outflow from the main ditches, overriding 

 the outlets of the underdrains just at that season when 

 their rapid emission is most required. But the evil 

 effects of river-floods are not only agricultural ; for, in . 

 the neighbourhood of towns, just where the meadows 

 may be rented as " accommodation land" at £2 or .£'3 

 or more per acre (and the proprietors might therefore 

 doubt the advantage of drying them), sanitary consi- 

 derations demand our care. Every man thinks his own 

 home peculiarly healthy, until the Registrar- General 

 dispels the pleasing illusion, and the tabular statistics of 

 public health prove most undeniably that districts 

 abutting upon a flooding river, or intersected with 

 marshy hollows and choked rivulets, are above all others 

 (excepting crowded and filthy cities) the haunts of fever 

 and glandular disease. Thus Northampton, on the 

 sluggish Nene, which overtops its banks, held up as a 

 navigation and pounded back by mill after mill along its 

 winding course, is shown by the " returns " to be one of 

 the few most deadly places in England ; and typhoid 

 and milder but enfeebling maladies constantly visit the 

 villages that inhale the hot-weather malaria of the 

 swampy meadows. The Ouse has a like unhealthy 

 character, as shown by the excessive rate of mortality 

 in Buckinghamshire, Huntingdonshire, &c.; and, indeed, 

 so have all our gloomy and lifeless rivers, as exemplified 

 at Norwich, surrounded by the heavily-flowing AVensum 

 and Yare — at Colchester, on the dull and tardy Colne 

 — at SaUsbury and the fashionable Bath, on the inactive 

 and cheerless Avon ; and the smaller towns and parishes 

 flanking the streams are the hotbeds of intermittent fever, 

 rheumatic and liver complaints, and scrofulous and pul- 

 monary disorders, aggravated if not originated by the 

 cold damps and poisonous exhalations from which the 

 inhabitants have no means of escape. Trunk drainage, 

 however, would prove a marvellous preventive. I am 

 informed that at the village of Cople, in Bedfordshire, the 

 Duke of Bedford cut a deep brook which relieved the 

 parish of stagnant water, and although up to that time 

 typhus fever was rarely out of the i)arish, only a single 

 case has since happened in a period of eight years. The 

 Duke is cutting a deep brook or drain, at the present 

 time, through the adjoining parish ; and in that county, 

 as well as in others, many landlords might employ the 

 surplus labour in straightening their watercourses, ex- 

 changing angles of land where necessary, and save or 

 reclaim ground enough to pay all the expense. I have 

 now alluded to the four great mischiefs arising from the 

 defective state of our rivers and watercourses— namely, 



